


to some this may look like a sunset

by koshiroganes



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: M/M, it's shiro's death so does it count idk, past character death??, pre-sheith/implied sheith
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-19
Updated: 2019-09-19
Packaged: 2020-11-02 09:08:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20694272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/koshiroganes/pseuds/koshiroganes
Summary: In last night’s dream there was a funeral.When the Kerberos mission failed, the Garrison erected headstones in a nearby cemetery for the lost crew members. Years later, after the invasion of Earth, Keith and Shiro pay a visit to Shiro's empty grave.





	to some this may look like a sunset

It’s early morning, still dark outside, when Shiro finds himself outside of the medical wing of the Garrison, pressing his hand to the fingerprint scanner to open the door. A month has crawled by since the battle with Sendak and the massive mech that nearly killed the Paladins, a month of nightmares so vivid they tangled hopelessly with his memories.

In last night’s dream there was a funeral.

He walked through a graveyard covered in a fog so thick he couldn’t see his feet, past rows and rows of headstones, a surety in his step—he knew, in the dream, where he was going, had taken the same path countless times before.

He reached a monument, a massive stone thing with five carved lion heads, mouths gaping open in silent roars. At their feet were engraved marble plaques—one obsidian, one the red-brown of desert sand, one ocean blue, one deep forest green, one sunny yellow.

His eyes had no more read the blocky “K” of Keith’s name before he awoke in a cold sweat, sucking in breath like a drowning man pulled from the sea and grasping blindly at the empty spot beside him, fingers searching for a splay of silk black hair on the pillow that should’ve been there and wasn’t.

His eyes searched the dark room wildly, but then his brain picked out the truth from the swirling blend of dream and memory—Keith in the hospital, skin littered with cuts and bruises and head wrapped with bandages but recovering. Alive.

Still—still, after everything, Shiro couldn’t—can’t—trust his own mind, and the urge to see Keith breathing with his own eyes, feel the beat of Keith’s pulse and the warmth of his skin under his fingers tugged at his gut and made his toes twitch.

And now he’s here, creeping into the med wing at four in the morning, flashing an I-saved-the-world smile at the nurses in the hope they’ll let him continue on his way instead of asking him to come back during visiting hours.

It’s a perk, one of few. Shiro’s always been able to get away with just about anything around here, but since returning from a year of torture by an imperialist alien race and saving the planet from certain obliteration, he’s treated like a demigod.

He stops at Keith’s door, raps it with his knuckles. Keith is a light sleeper like him, ready for a fight at a moment’s notice, and Shiro knows the knocking will wake him. He feels bad about interrupting Keith’s sleep, but only a little.

“Come in,” mumbles a sleepy Keith, and something unknots itself in Shiro’s chest. He pushes the door open just as Keith is sitting up in bed, running long, thin fingers through his shaggy hair. He looks up and sees Shiro, and his brow furrows.

“Hey,” Shiro says.

“Hey,” Keith says. “Is everything okay? What time is it?”

“Fourish. Everything is fine. I just wanted to…”

Shiro trails off, suddenly embarrassed at how stupid this is, but then—Keith won’t think it’s stupid. Keith has never for a moment thought badly of Shiro, has never doubted him for the diseases that plagued him, once lurking sinister in his muscles, now in the depths of his mind.

He drops into the chair at Keith’s bedside and pulls a bandaged hand toward him, laces their finger together. They’re something—it’s undefined and unspoken, but it’s there, has been since Shiro woke up with consciousness and clone body intact after dreaming of nothing but Keith. A shift—Keith’s hand on his thigh, Shiro’s in his hair, Shiro’s back to Keith’s chest in the night.

“I dreamed I went to your grave,” Shiro says. Keith says nothing, just watches him with a steady gaze, letting Shiro stroke his thumb over Keith’s pale skin. “I woke up and I… needed to be sure. That you were still here.”

“Morbid,” Keith says, a corner of his mouth twitching up. “Well, I am still here.”

Thank God he’s here. Thank God he’s here and Shiro can listen to his deep voice rough with sleep, let it wind through his veins and calm his terrified heart.

“It was the worst thing I’ve ever felt,” Shiro says. “Worse than seeing Adam’s picture on that wall. Worse than the Galra.”

“Yeah. I know.”

Shiro looks up at him. The lights are off and the only thing illuminating the room is the splash of moonlight through the window, cutting across the scar on Keith’s cheek and his impossibly indigo eyes.

“I’ve visited your grave like a hundred times,” Keith says, shrugging. “So I know. It’s shit.”

Shiro has never considered that he has a grave somewhere.

Of course he should’ve—Sam and Matt must have them too. There must have been funerals, eulogies, caskets lowered into the ground even though there were no bodies to bury. Shiro thinks of Keith, a head shorter and face rounder, sitting in a pew at the back staring at a blown up portrait of Shiro’s face and fighting the urge to run and keep running.

“Why did you keep going back?”

“Fuck, Shiro, I dunno. Same reason I kept going to my dad’s, I guess. I mean, it pissed me off so much that I couldn’t do anything to bring you back. But it also felt… like I was close to you. Like, I don’t know—like having your name on it gave it some power, or something.”

Keith hates nothing more than feeling powerless, Shiro knows. And yet he endured that feeling again and again to shrink the billions of miles between them, even if just by a little.

God, Shiro loves him.

“I want to go,” Shiro says, surprising himself and surprising Keith, by the wide-eyed look he’s wearing. “I want to see it.”

“Seriously? Why would you want to see that?”

“Because I lived.” Shiro squeezes Keith’s hand, still held firm in his own. “Because you did bring me back. Because if there was a grave with your name on it I’d bring you back too.”

Keith cocks an eyebrow, a smile on his lips. “Okay then. What do you say to busting me out of here, old timer?”

—

Shiro had a memorial plaque at the Garrison, but it’s long since been taken down—quietly, after Sam returned to Earth and they couldn’t keep pretending Shiro was dead. But there was also a headstone, in a graveyard outside the nearest town, a small comfort for the loved ones he and Matt and Sam left behind.

They hop a hoverbike, against Shiro’s best judgment given Keith’s lingering concussion, and Shiro steers them through the cold desert, the ink black sky above glittering with stars, Keith’s arms wrapped tight around his waist. It’s exhilarating—Shiro can’t remember the last time he flew like this without a mission ahead of him. He can’t remember, but he has no doubt it was with Keith.

After half an hour of getting pummeled by wind and sand, Shiro parks the bike and they climb off, remove their helmets and hang them over the handles of the bike. Keith leads the way, walking with purpose. He knows exactly where to go, and memories of the nightmare overlay reality, double vision making him dizzy.

Keith lived this over and over, and Shiro could barely handle dreaming it.

Shiro knows which grave is his long before they get to it—it’s one of the three tallest in the cemetery and the only one that stands alone, Matt’s and Sam’s clustered close together. The stone is made of pale granite and carved with sharp, geometric angles. Shiro swallows as he reads the inscription.

“‘To some this may look like a sunset,’” he reads quietly, “‘but it’s a new dawn.’”

“Chris Hadfield. First Canadian to walk in space,” Keith says. “I hated that damn quote. Like it’s some deep shit about living after death. He said it when he was coming back to Earth from space. How’s that for irony?”

Shiro can imagine Keith, younger and angrier, jaw and fists clenched, fighting the urge to break his hand on this headstone bearing a quote about returning from outer space when Shiro never would. He doesn’t know what to say, so he just lays his hand on Keith’s shoulder and squeezes.

Keith turns to him suddenly and wraps his arms around Shiro’s middle, buries his face in Shiro’s chest and breathes in deep. Shiro hugs him back, tight and close. He rests his chin on the top of Keith’s head, grateful Keith hasn’t grown too much for this. The sky is starting to brighten, going from black to deep purple. “Hey.”

Keith looks up.

“Want to watch a real sunrise?”

Keith cranes his neck to look behind himself. A smile tugs at his mouth. “Yeah, okay.”

**Author's Note:**

> I had literally no idea how to end this so I just stopped writing lol thanks 4 reading find me on twitter at koshiroganes


End file.
